Skilling Up

what are the more efficient ways to skill up these days?
I know they introduced the skill up books but im not sure how farming sparks for them compares to skilling up directly. - Last i remember was still in aby time with retaliation. (Tho i dont even remember the specifics of that any more)

Depends on what you're skilling, I'd think.

Enfeebling magic is dead easy- grab Moogle, some pitarus, maybe some of the Temachtiani gear, Liminus Earring, and cast Break on a Ceizak mandie. While it's petrified, spam Dia over and over until it's unpetrified. By then, Break's back up. Repeat until capped. It won't take long. Bard skills work pretty much the same way.

For weapons, I hear you can skill reliably by beating on roots/etc in reives.

For shield, I went to Aby Altep, grabbed about twenty black mandies, and let them bear on me until I capped.

For blue magic, I got a mandie in Ceizak and spammed Sprout Snack and Foot Kick on it till dead, then repeated it.

Someone from the Society to Prevent Cruelty to Mandragoras is going to have me arrested...

I personally recommend leveling to 99 before bothering to cap skills. Ilvl gear grants enough of a boost so that you can still hit even with skill levels below 100.

that will give u an idea of my memory regarding it... forgot to say just what im skilling. I meant weapons when i was typing that'

u can skill up on roots/in reives?

As far as I've been told, yes you can.

Lair Reives have the enemies cluster around the nest, so you can stand back and safely spam Dia for Enfeebling Skill, even at lower levels. Same works for most other magics, including Geomancy where you can cast Geo-Poison over and over. Reives also have no evasion so even with crap combat skills, you'll hit them.

you can skill up in reives, as my mule has gotten some that way. having said that, the surrounding mobs can attack you once you start wailing away on the root, so be careful

for weapons, there are uragnites at the beaches in ceizak.

are any of those more efficient then the old retaliation way?
I had another skilling on bees in ceizak while i was lvling else where. Worked since i wasnt paying full attention to it. But when they hit around 220~ the skill ups started to get very rare. But i will want to finish skilling up on my main some time as well.

Just use your sparks for skill ups or buy them off AH

yea i kinda already mentioned that in OP. Whether or not farming sparks would be faster then direct skilling. Figured id start with finding good ways of skilling before asking best ways of farming sparks.

if you have a DD job with its main skills capped it would probably be faster, but less fun, to just farm sparks and use books ad nauseum. I can't stand just sitting there using items and I hate the sound effect, though, so I skill up the probably slower, but more fun way. the moogle and skill up food should help a lot. basically, Seekerstar's post was good advice if farming sparks is boring to you, is what I'm saying.

i dont see how spark farming can be more boring then the old stand in front of a mob for 10 hours+ swinging...

and yes, i do have dd jobs

the part where you're using books would be boring. i'd rather feel more active. sparks is probably faster and if using books wouldn't be annoying to you then it seems like a win-win.

whats the best way to farm sparks then?

i usually set the damage related ones and the ones for killing a certain number of mobs and go kill something weak in a zone that has a zone wide kill objective for that specific mob. I pick mandies because they're my go to mob for dicking around. close to adoulin so it is easy to get back if something happens in town or there is a spontaneous event. There are probably faster ways, but this is what I do. You might also be better off farming gil or something depending on how you do in the gil department and just buying books from others.

Edit: Doing this is also going to net you unity accolades which converts to something like 500k gil for capped accolades last I converted powders to gil. IDK if they changed that, but if they haven't then you can use that gil to buy books in addition to what you'd get from sparks.

only ever farmed sparks once and that was just a secondary thing; FC mandies in aby when i first came back. - Unity i havnt even looked into yet

i do the mandies right outside of adoulin. anything you can get CP off of relatively easily is going to be viable, so you can kill many birds with one stone if you play your cards right. You'd be like, quadruple dipping with getting unity accolades and grinding job points and merits while getting your sparks to buy books for skill ups.

I only reccomend reives if your farming ranged.. but also if your using windower /autora ftw


use the uragnites outside audolin for melee weapons

both of these the biggest advantage is AFK skilling up

if you are ACTIVE in your skilling.. spark farming MIGHT be faster

but doing reives or uragnites you can do it while sleeping, going out for dinner, a movie, or spending time with friends/family^^

retaliation method is good maybe for getting to 200 or so. but you can go from 0-cap with the above method.. so i don't really like the idea of changing zones.

best use of abyssea is shield/guard/parry... but even then.. you can still do mandies in adoulin


gear + the buff from adoulin that gives increased skill up + food

makes adoulin better than ANY other area(cuz of the buff mainly)

For me, Melo Melo has gotten my skills up on a lot of melee weapons. I won't argue its faster, but its low maintnence even with vanilla ffxi. regen atmas and sparks gear and you'll never be in danger, clean your house, do dishes, etc. just remember to /blockaid, someone assumed i was long term afk and tried to take hate and pull it away, turned into an unproductive annoying game.

problem with afk abyssea skilling.. is your limited to 2 hours^^(unless you farm ahead of time)

these are doing pretty nicely. up to 320+ so far. Been fighting the same uragnite for the last 30min. Only downside is i have to keep up provokes to keep hate off healing/support trusts. (Using lvl 5 weapon). Convenient to let me look up other information and plan out other stuff for him, or work on my main.

how do you manage afk for that long? I can go for a while on war (using 3 healing trusts and ulmia) but eventually they will run out of mp. And that poison can bring you down fast if you cant do anything about it. Even with apururu.

edit; of course it occurs to me that with 4 trusts out and using a low lvl weapon, my alt needed to voke to keep hate off them anyway.